UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

The enlargement of Europe loudly promises inclusion but it is
actually based on differentiating Schengen from non-Schengen states.
This led to a certain tension between already included countries and
the aspiring applicants that are yet to be admitted. The evident
tension is based on the manipulation with phantasma of inclusion,
belonging, participation, or membership.

My paper deals with a contemporary art phenomenon that emerged in
the countries that are not part of the European Union. Since the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a great number of contemporary art projects
are concerned with the continuously changing borders between Schengen
and non-Schengen states. It is not surprising, if one takes into
account that each artist coming from a non-Schengen country, in order
to participate at an international project, needs at least one month to
collect all the required documents for a Schengen visa. While opposing
to the strict visa and passport regimes which make their life as
free-lance artists impossible, artists imagine performances, objects,
installations, video or photography projects that are often clandestine
attempts for finding a way to trick the political system. Therefore,
one can say that they use their profession and mediums in a quite
different way than it has been used before.

Disguise, lying, hiding, and other performative strategies are used
as a means for the art actions that are sometimes illegal and
dangerous. Instead to mime or criticise the reality, the artists enter
its order and art becomes a part of everyday life. Moreover, not only
does art become part of reality but also it simultaneously changes it
inside out and artists become agents of such transformations. These
projects change the regimes of representations that are dependent on
state power as well as the way in which art functions. Therefore, in
the context of my paper I will also look at this kind of projects as
into a unique way of entanglement of different life realms (social,
economical or political) that deconstructs the understanding of art as
an elitist and privileged system of signification isolated within
aesthetics.

During my presentation, I want to focus on several art projects that
deal with visas, passports, and immigration policy of EU in general.
For example, I will present a series of projects realised by NSK and
IRWIN (Slovenian group of artists) dealing with the imaginary state "in
time": their Neue Slovenische Kunst that issues passports and has its
"army". I will also focus on the series of three projects Crossing
Borders by Tanja Ostojic, artist from Serbia) during which in 2000
she illegally crossed the border between Slovenia and Austria, and
later married a German husband in a marriage arranged through Internet
in order to acquire an EU passport.

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